Leading with Strategic Thinking: Four Ways Effective Leaders Gain Insight, Drive Change, and Get Results

Resources

Firming Up and Rounding Out Your Skills and Abilities

The previous chapter presented ways to develop your ability to think and lead more strategically. As you give additional consideration to strategic thinking and leadership, it is important that you push boundaries and test new skills and abilities. It is only through testing and practice that you will expand your toolkit. As you learn and apply new skills, you may wish to explore additional tools, review other books and articles, or attend a conference or workshop on the subject of strategic thinking and leadership. If that is the case, the following resources may prove useful.

Tools

Regardless of your preferred strategic leadership type, we believe you will find the following tools useful. The first is the Strategic Thinking Self-Audit. It is designed to help you (1) determine the extent to which you are leveraging strategic thinking and (2) identify potential blind spots that need to be addressed through additional consideration.

Figure 7.1 Strategic Thinking Personal Audit

Brainstorming

Regardless of your preferred strategic leadership type, both strategic insight and strategic execution involve generating and organizing ideas. When generating ideas, we use the following process:

1. Review all of the relevant information and data you have on hand.
2. Brainstorm ideas.¹ For example, when considering how you will ...